00:00:01 Last night, since it\'s summer, as a family, I was forced to watch a movie with my kids. The movie is called \"The Sheep Detectives.\" I don\'t know how they figured out I\'m preaching on Psalm 23 today. 00:00:17 [laughing] 00:00:17 I could see a lot of illustrations I could pull out from that. I don\'t want to spoil the movie for any of you. But just a very high level, interesting overview of the movie is that it begins with a very unusual premise, where George is a shepherd who has a bunch of sheep, and George is played by Hugh Jackman. It\'s crazy to think of Hugh Jackman from being a Wolverine to being a shepherd. It just takes a while to mentally shift. 00:00:49 And I really like him, and that was the bait they used to get me to see him. It\'s nowhere close to... I think he should just play Wolverine. 00:00:59 [laughing] 00:01:00 That\'s my personal take. But he did a good job, and the whole thing is about George is a shepherd. He brings his sheep every evening. He reads mystery stories to them aloud. He assumes, of course, they cannot understand a word he speaks. But they recognize his voice. They are listening. They learn about suspects and evidences, and as each sheep has its own character, and they make it very lively and funny and emotional and all of that. 00:01:34 And then one day he goes missing, and then the sheep imagine something terrible has happened, and they feel lost. They are longing for their shepherd. And so they set out to unlock this mystery, and the rest of the movie goes about how they do that till they finally get a shepherd who really cares for them. Now, what stood out to me in that whole story was, even though it\'s a children\'s movie or a family movie, how they portrayed the shepherd and the sheep\'s relational dynamics was powerful. 00:02:10 As we are looking into the summer in the Psalms, and as I shared last week, the Psalms is like a bible within a bible. And here we have David, who is writing this psalm. We don\'t know when he wrote it. He is personally describing who God is for him. So we can call this psalm, if we were to give it an alternate title, as David\'s personal creed, his manifesto. His creed in terms of his statement of faith, like how we read our creeds every week, who he says God is for him. 00:02:49 And it gives us an insight into David\'s heart and his faith. So we\'re going to look at three simple things from this sermon. Through David\'s eyes, we\'re going to try to understand a little more who our shepherd is, what our shepherd does, and where our shepherd leads us. Who our shepherd is, what our shepherd does, and where our shepherd leads us. Firstly, who our shepherd really is. Every word is loaded in this psalm. The Hebrew is a very compact language. In English, we use a lot more words. 00:03:30 If you read the psalm in its original, it\'s half the size. The very first line is loaded, and it\'s arresting. He says, \"The Lord is my shepherd.\" And in the Hebrew, there is no verb. There are just two nouns. It says Yahweh and Rohi. A main noun and a reflective noun. Yahweh, as we all know, is the covenant name of God. And when David uses Yahweh, he is describing who God is for him based on how God has revealed himself so far in human history. 00:04:13 It reminds David and us that this God has a history. He has a history of coming after broken people and redeeming them, beginning with Adam and Noah and Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and then eventually a whole nation. That\'s why he\'s called the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. So David knew that that\'s what the name Yahweh meant. But what makes this beautiful and powerful, he just doesn\'t say Yahweh. When he says Yahweh Rohi, he says, \"The Lord is my shepherd.\" He makes it very personal. 00:05:03 He knew Yahweh. Now, not just because he read about him in the Bible and the stories that he has seen. Now he is trying to express to us a personal knowledge of this Yahweh. We are all familiar with J.I. Packer\'s quote from \"Knowing God,\" that\'s been beaten to death. It says, \"We can know all about God and yet not know God.\" As much as that is true, it begs the question, how do we then know God? How do we know who God is? Isn\'t it? 00:05:38 Sometimes when you grow up in a Christian home or you attend a church like ours, we are very teaching heavy, and we are very proud of our theological heritage, and we get to hear so much about the truths of God. But then that does not automatically translate into a personal, experiential understanding of God, isn\'t it? So how does one really come to know God? 00:06:08 I think David is someone who comes to know who God is through all the life experiences that God allows him to go through and reveals him through that. Through the good ones and the bad ones, through the joyful ones and the sorrow ones. David was a shepherd who became a king. We all know that, right? And he knew this God who comes after people who are not deserving, who have nothing great in of themselves, by knowing how God came after him. 00:06:57 He was a shepherd boy watching sheep, and God picks him. He sends a prophet to go to his house and talk to his parents. His own parents initially overlooked him. They were presenting all other brothers, thinking, \"Hey, Prophet Samuel, maybe he\'s the king. Maybe he\'s the king.\" And then finally, it comes to David. His own parents, perhaps, I\'m thinking, didn\'t see him as a king material in terms of his identity. 00:07:29 So David\'s first exposure or a deep experience was knowing that this God loved him and picked him to be a king. That he was seen by a god when he felt others didn\'t see him. Perhaps some of you feel that you\'re not being seen, especially when you are growing up in a bicultural environment. You may feel torn between two cultures, not being seen here nor there. But it doesn\'t matter which culture or where you are or how you are brought up, God sees you no matter what. And not just that. 00:08:17 When Saul pursues him, and he was running from cave to desert, in all of those moments, he saw how God protected him in a very experiential way. His road to becoming a king was not easy. Yeah, you got picked to be the king, but now God didn\'t say, \"Now your life is going to be amazing, happily ever after.\" That\'s not how our Christian journey is. Though God comes after us, our life goes through ups and downs, isn\'t it? And he got to see God in action. 00:08:57 He also was a king who won big battles and big victories. He had his highs in his life. He established the nation of Israel. He was loved by the people. He was their beloved king. Power, fame, victory. He saw God granting him all of those, too, and God\'s revelation through that. But the peak of it is something when he was what he experienced in his own brokenness. 00:09:24 When he was at the height of his career and when he dropped all his guard and experienced the moral failure, most of us would have thought if we were writing that chapter, we are done. You\'re done. People are waiting to watch you fall and fail and to call it off and mark you off, but God was not done after him. He sent again a prophet, Nathan, to go and remind him and convict him, not to punish and condemn him, but to draw him back. That\'s our God. He knew, now this is a covenantal God. 00:10:04 He\'s not just making a covenant with a nation. He makes covenants with you and me and comes after us, even if we try to run away from Him, even if you are not seen, even if you mess up, our God is a God who comes after to be our shepherd. And so David pens Psalm 51. What a powerful psalm it is, isn\'t it? It didn\'t just stop here, and he was towards the end of his life, pursued now not by another king, but by his own son, Absalom. And God protected him, too. 00:10:40 So when David writes, \"Yahweh Rohe,\" he is writing it from the gut and the bottom of his heart to tell us, \"I have experienced my God as being my shepherd in all of my life situations, so you can trust Him, too.\" Isn\'t that amazing? Sometimes, as I said earlier, when we tend to only know God in our heads, in our minds, it doesn\'t capture us. My mom\'s here. We had to memorize this psalm when we were kids and had to recite it like perfectly to get our Sunday meal. 00:11:21 [chuckles] I memorized the psalm in my heart, but it had not really sunk into my heart until I had to go through a valley experience myself I shared before with you. I\'d learned to study the Bible in Greek, and when we lived in Germany and when I had this life-threatening illness and was given two to five years, I couldn\'t come to grips, and all my knowledge then was appearing to be vaporized. I read a 300, 400-page book called \"The Sovereignty of God\" by Arthur W. 00:11:57 Pink, but I could not accept that our God is a sovereign God in my own life. But it was through those dark times these truths became clear. It was through those dark moments God\'s presence became beautiful, and I could experience Him as my shepherd. A crisis reveals three things in our lives. A crisis reveals to us who our shepherd is in those times. Who is our go-to, or what is our go-to when we feel threatened, when things around us, when the ground beneath you shakes? 00:12:35 In Silicon Valley, crisis is always an opportunity for a new technology, a new app, a new product, isn\'t it? Technology is our shepherd in Silicon Valley. People are not religious. People are not even spiritual like in some other parts, because we believe that we can fix everything, isn\'t it? Here we have Elon Musk trying to take us to Mars and colonize Mars. And I\'m wondering for what? I mean, like, okay, what happens after that? 00:13:09 [chuckles] AI is promising to be our shepherd, our personal shepherd. It\'s rapidly evolving, and we are now developing a deeper relationship, a sort of unhealthy dependency even, to talk to AI for prompts from how to solve your work problems to how to solve your life problems, to now, especially the younger people, talk to AI as a therapist. But literally, AI is functioning as the modern-day shepherd for our souls. And it\'s sadly not always leading us in the right paths, isn\'t it? 00:13:54 Not only do these situations in life tell us who our shepherd is, it also reveals to us where we put our faith in. For some, it might just be your careers or your boss at work, and you think, if this AI is taking my job away, and am I going to be laid off? And let me just work twice the amount of hours and make sure my boss is happy, even at the cost of my time with my family. Or just watching the stocks with eagle eyes. Let me make sure I invest in the right stock at the right time. 00:14:33 I can\'t believe this stock went up 3,000% in one year. Or perhaps education. But David has come to this realization experientially when he says, \"Yahweh Rohi, the Lord is my shepherd.\" The consequence of that, when you land there, he says, \"I shall not want.\" He doesn\'t say, I will not have any need. There\'s a difference between a need and a want, isn\'t it? Our God is a God who shall supply all our needs according to his riches and glory. But sometimes our wants could be a little off, isn\'t it? 00:15:20 And thankfully, our God is not someone who\'s going to give you everything you want, but he knows exactly what we need and what our real wants are and gives them. So my question for us this morning, my dear friends, is, has God become personal for you? Can you say Yahweh Rohi? My God? The Lord is my shepherd. Have you experienced the shepherding touch of God in your life? 00:15:50 Maybe for some, you\'re unable to trust God, or even if there is a God, or you\'re unable to trust church as you hear about leaders falling and churches falling. People are fallen. We live in a broken world, and those things happen. But the one who never fails, never falls, who never disappoints us is our loving God, who is our shepherd. His covenant of grace pursues us no matter what, including those who fall. 00:16:17 And God doesn\'t say simply on a flippantly, I love you, like sometimes people tend to do in relationships. He says, \"I\'m covenanting to love you no matter what. I have loved you even before the foundations of the world, and I will love you till I bring you home safely.\" That\'s the meaning of Yahweh being our covenantal God, and this covenantal God is our shepherd. Isn\'t that amazing? 00:16:50 We need God as our shepherd to bring us back to him because we, like sheep, tend to fall away, tend to do things that are weird. Now, secondly, after giving us this personal creed of who he thinks God is, David is now unpacking for us what the shepherd does. He lists five things that the shepherd does. First, we read about that in verses 2 to 4. He says, \"He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul. 00:17:30 He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name\'s sake.\" What does God do? First, he provides. He provides green pastures. The topography of Israel is very similar to California, kind of rolling hills, deserts, and then you have suddenly these patches of green where the shepherds know how to find them. 00:17:59 Even if you drive by, and those of you who hiked Mission Peak or Rancho San Antonio, you know there are these places where there is lush greenery and trees because that\'s where the water from the rain flows. And sometimes there are small streaks or dams. The sheep have no way to figure out where those are, but the shepherd knows it like the back of his hand. And when they show up, especially in summer when there is no rain, they lead their sheep from place to place. 00:18:29 He watches them, he feeds for them. The sheep just need to follow their shepherd. But they trust that their shepherd always provides. Sometimes you may have a job or lose a job, but God is our shepherd. He\'s our provider. He will always provide, no matter what, just like he provided manna for the people of Israelites. Just what you need every day, not more, not less. Secondly, he restores. He says he provides basic things like food and water, sustenance. Second, he says, \"He restores my soul.\" 00:19:16 And David knew it. He needed the biggest restoration that we could think of. A fall like the one he experienced in life was huge, and God restored him. Restoring means is restoring our whole soul back to him. Jesus talks about how a shepherd who has 100 sheep, when he loses one, he leaves the 99 and goes after that one sheep to restore him. That\'s the heart of our shepherding God. Maybe this morning, some of you are lost too. You\'re lost to busyness. You\'re lost because of a grief you carry. 00:20:03 You\'re lost because you are unable to receive answers to prayers you\'ve been praying. You\'re lost because you are going through a major crisis in your life that doesn\'t make sense. But take heart, our shepherd will restore you back. And thirdly, he says, \"He leads me in paths of righteousness.\" A shepherd knows the way to lead his people. For most of us, we are focused on our destination. When I plug into the GPS, when I get into my car and it gives a destination, it gives three routes. 00:20:50 One route takes 45 minutes. The second route takes 35 minutes. The third route takes 20 minutes, but I\'ll have to pay $10 toll. Guess what I\'m always tempted to do? Is to push for the third route and pay the $10 because I hate sitting in traffic. I think it\'s total waste of time. And then I get reminded of my wife and say, \"Oh, I can\'t do that. I\'ll have to just stay in traffic.\" Because for us, the destination matters. In a hustle culture like Bay Area, you want to keep moving. 00:21:31 You got to keep hustling. You got to take the next job, the next position, the next thing. Move fast, fail fast, and succeed. That\'s the entrepreneurship mantra, isn\'t it, for startups? We bring that mindset into our spirituality, too. We want to be fixed. We want to be great instantly. Because for us, destination matters. God is more interested in our sanctification than our destination. Let me repeat. God is more interested in our sanctification than our destination. 00:22:11 You know he made Israel take the long route, 40 years. That\'s not how long it takes to go to Canaan. Went around in circles because he was refining them. A God who split the Red Sea and swallowed the mightiest army, it\'s so easy for him to have taken them instantaneously, but he had to take them 40 years. And the reason was because except for Moses and Caleb and Joshua, all the other people saw the giants to be bigger than their God. 00:22:52 And it was only Caleb and Joshua who saw that their God was bigger than the giants. And David knew it when he was young, when he met Goliath. And the whole nation was trembling and shivering. He was able to say, \"Our God, who is mightier and greater, is bigger than this one man who does not have God.\" You see, sometimes God has to take us through, I call the scenic route, because He cares about our heart more than getting us fast to where we need to go. 00:23:29 God is more interested in our sanctification than our destination. Sometimes then when I\'m forced to slow down and sit in traffic, I end up listening to a podcast or audio Bible or sometimes songs, and it\'s actually great. I end up being refreshed when I get off it than if I\'d just taken the fast lane and have gone. Fourthly, He protects. Says, \"Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for you are with me, your rod and your staff, they comfort me.\" 00:24:09 All kinds of dangers are lurking in the desert because sheep cannot always only be going through plains. Usually, water is there when there are ravines or canyons, which is where the sheep have to be taken to, and those are usually deep If you\'ve been to Antelope Canyon or even the Grand Canyon, just the whole canyons, you know how it is. And that\'s where the water is usually, at the bottom. But those days, those were dangerous, perilous places. 00:24:37 You\'re attacked by wild animals because that\'s where they go. You\'re attacked by thieves. And that\'s why shepherds carried a rod and a staff because a rod was meant to protect their sheep, like how David used it to kill a lion that came for his sheep, and a staff was for the sheep so they don\'t go astray, to lead them and to pull them back. I used to think sheep are the dumbest animals, but yesterday\'s movie gave me a different perspective on that. 00:25:12 It ends with a reading of \"How to Raise Sheep,\" and I think it\'s a real book perhaps. But they\'re not the dumbest animals because they can recognize their shepherd, but they\'re the most vulnerable. When they are under attack, they can\'t defend themselves. Any animal can take them down, from a coyote to a lion. Sheep need protection. And so they know that if they don\'t have a shepherd, they are vulnerable for attack. 00:25:39 And so Psalm is just saying that you\'re going to go through valley experiences in life, but you need to remember your shepherd is always walking with you. Because our shepherd is not just someone who walks with us. He has his rod, which gives him power and authority. In olden days, kings were shepherds. Abraham was almost a king because he had shepherds, and wherever he went, he was transactioning with the treaties through treaties and covenants. And the rod was a symbol of kingly power. 00:26:17 So our shepherd is also a king who rules, who reigns. He has the whole world in his hands. And his staff together reveal to us that it can bring us tremendous comfort, that he\'s not going to allow anything in our life that is beyond our abilities to do anything that takes us down. But something beautiful happens if you read closely Psalm 23 at this point. The Psalm changes pronouns here. It switches from me to I and he to you. 00:26:56 What\'s basically happening is now David, as he\'s thinking about his valley of death experiences, immediately switches to prayer. This verse is a very powerful prayer. He\'s now directly speaking to God. He\'s not telling us about who his God is. His creed has stopped, and now he is pouring his heart out in prayer. He says, \"Your rod and your staff, they comfort me, Lord.\" Nothing helps us during times of crisis than prayer, to experience the closeness and presence of God. 00:27:35 And as I was sharing in Germany, as we went through this life crisis, we fasted five days and prayed over this Psalm. So this Psalm is very dear and personal to me. It was the first Psalm I preached on when I was in Germany. And we had a missionary friend and a couple of our German friends who would come every day. He was an eye surgeon. He would operate from 7:00 a.m. to 10:00 and 11:00 o\'clock, he would show up to pray with us. And that was God saying, \"Hey, I see you. 00:28:04 I\'m sending my children to surround you so you can have some strength and comfort.\" And the biggest miracle was not just that I was healed without any medication, which was great, but the biggest miracle was something that happened in me during that time because I thought I am the shepherd of my life. I am my family\'s shepherd. I need to care for my wife. I need to care for my kids. And that had to die. 00:28:36 I would sit in hospitals and visiting my oncologist, and there are people around me who have lost their hair, and I would think that\'s going to be me one day, and I would stop combing my hair and wouldn\'t care how I looked. But what had to die was not some cells in my body. It was this pride that had to die and experience God\'s presence, which it did. And I did become ready to die physically, but this was a new life that God breathed into me to see Him differently as my shepherd. 00:29:11 Knowing that our God will not even let death to consume us provides real comfort, isn\'t it? And let me ask you, my dear friends, do you have a shepherd you can turn to in times of crisis? Do you see God as your shepherd in those times, or you see God as your enemy who is against you? 00:29:33 I was visiting a Holocaust museum in Washington, DC, several years ago, almost 20 years ago, and they actually had two Holocaust survivors who were sitting there and sharing their stories, and you could interact with them. And I was hearing that they actually, for a moment between our interactions, were talking to each other. And they didn\'t know each other before. And so one of the questions they asked is: How did you handle the genocide? They were very young, of course, when it happened. 00:30:00 It was very poignant. One person said, \"You know, the whole Holocaust and genocide made me to hate God and run away from Him as far as I could.\" And the other person was saying, \"This made me to find my strength in God, and I ran towards Him.\" My dear friends, our God is a shepherd you can run to in terms of crisis, too. Is He that for you? And lastly, David closes with where our shepherd leads us This is in Psalm 23:5, \"You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. 00:30:41 You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life.\" There\'s a shift in metaphor here. There\'s a shift in imagery here. Until now, the imagery is that of a shepherd and a sheep, and now the imagery is that of a banquet. David now, God is giving him a switch of getting an eschatological view of the final banquet that\'s going to happen one day. 00:31:10 God is basically showing David, \"It is not over till I say it\'s over, and this is how you will know when it is going to be over. I\'m going to bring you into my house, and I\'m going to spread this table before you in the presence of your enemies who are not going to be part of that banquet. And I will anoint your head with oil till your cup overflows.\" It\'s an anticipatory banquet filled with hope. 00:31:39 Guests in Oriental cultures, Mediterranean cultures, when they were invited, it was customary for them to anoint their head with some perfumed oil and fill their cup with wine overflowing. And the most beautiful part is the promise the Psalm ends with. It says, \"Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life.\" The word [clears throat] that is used for follow is a hunting metaphor. The Hebrew has a verb called a piel, which is an intensified form of an action. 00:32:24 If you want to intensify an action, that\'s when you use that verb form. And this is a form of word that\'s used when an army is hunting after the fleeing army of those who were defeated, or a powerful wild animal, a predatory animal, hunting after and chasing its prey to get it and nail it down. But in the Psalm, that word is used for something very different. David is saying, \"I will not be chased by my enemies. I will not be chased by my sins and my failures and my brokenness. 00:33:12 What\'s going to chase me is the goodness and mercy of God.\" Isn\'t that beautiful? We all think when we fall and we fail, \"Oh, man, that\'s it. I\'m done.\" But God is saying, \"If I am your shepherd, you can be assured, surely what will follow you, what will chase you is not my wrath or my anger, which I have taken down on someone else.\" I\'m going to talk about that in a minute. \"What is going to follow you is my goodness and my mercy all the days of your life.\" 00:33:48 Not just on good days or not just on bad days, not just when life goes great, not just when your life is down, all the days of your life. What a fantastic promise it is. His goodness and mercy is going to pursue us, chase us, hunt us down. Radap is the Hebrew word for it. And his mercy, as said, God\'s covenantal, loyal, unfailing love is going to chase us. And he ends with, \"I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever,\" where we can abide with him. 00:34:35 The chief reason God makes a covenant, which is repeated throughout the Bible, is so that he will be our God and we will be his people, and he is promising he\'s going to make that happen. But if you just read Psalm 23 separately, you\'re not going to get the whole picture. Psalm 23 sits between Psalm 22 and Psalm 24. Psalm 22 is this Messianic Psalm. That\'s the Psalm Jesus recites when he\'s on the cross. That\'s the Psalm which talks about, \"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?\" 00:35:14 In Psalm 23, we read about the Lord is my shepherd. In Psalm 24 is a kingly Psalm. It says, \"Lift up your heads, O gates, that the King of glory may come in.\" And there is a reason for that order. I\'m not sure canonically the reason why they have placed it. We don\'t know when it was written, but that\'s the canonical order, and there is a reason for that. And the reason is that Jesus said, \"I am the good shepherd,\" when he came into this world. He doesn\'t say, \"I\'ll show you the shepherd.\" 00:35:53 He takes the covenant name into his own lips. Ego eimi in Greek means Yahweh in Hebrew. So he says, Yahweh Rohi becomes Yahweh Jesus. He\'s self-identifying to be our good shepherd, and he describes what a good shepherd does. He says a good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep. Shepherds risk their lives for their sheep, and that\'s what Jesus did. We can\'t enter into God\'s presence. When we fail, when we mess up, when we fall down, he takes the hit on our behalf. 00:36:36 And that\'s why we have Psalm 22, and that\'s what happened on the cross. It was our shepherd who was nailed on the cross. And the great reversal happened, our shepherd also became a sheep. Isaiah 53:6,7 says, \"All we like sheep have gone astray and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He\'s led like a lamb to the slaughter.\" The shepherd took the straying sheep\'s place and your place and mine. And it doesn\'t end there. The imagery is carried all the way till the book of Revelations. 00:37:13 In Revelations 7:17 says, \"The lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd.\" The lamb once again becomes a shepherd. \"And he will guide them to springs of living water, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.\" The lamb is the shepherd who is slain and raised again and reigns victoriously now. Psalm 23 is not just David\'s psalm or a funeral psalm, my dear friends. It was David\'s creed and it needs to be our creed. 00:37:46 Only a slain and risen shepherd can guarantee verse 6 for us, and that\'s why David could write it, and that\'s why you and I can pray it when we go through those times. So as I close, I want to leave some applications for us. For those of us living and working in Silicon Valley, maybe you need to audit where your I shall not want actually comes from. If your sense of being enough is indexed to your compensation or your title or the next role or a market cycle, that can be lost. 00:38:30 You need to practice green pasture trust that God provides in daily portions, not decade-long guarantees. And take up a weekly Sabbath as an act of trust. When you stop working on Sunday, God says, the reason he encourages practicing Sabbath is not just because it\'s part of the Ten Commandments and not just to make it legalistic. When you stop working, you are trusting God is working. It\'s not you working on Sunday that\'s going to guarantee your job. 00:39:05 I can guarantee you, if there\'s a reception, they will drop you like your hat and your job is gone. But when you stop working and you rest, you are letting God to continue to work because our God neither slumbers nor sleeps, isn\'t it? That\'s how you practically, experientially show your trust in God being your shepherd by letting him shepherd your life and taking the rest that he offers to feed on his word and to let the Spirit nourish us. 00:39:34 And for parents, let me encourage you, shepherd your home like how God shepherds you. And if there is any sheep here this morning who has wandered away, not into some big scandal or sin, but maybe just into busyness perhaps, you need to read Ezekiel 34 and be reminded that the shepherd is not waiting to find your way back. He\'s already out and looking. Like the father waiting for his prodigal son to return. And he will welcome you back. He will embrace you. 00:40:18 His goodness and mercy will follow you all the days of your life